Sayings by the author of the introduction

Sayings « by the author of the introduction »

1 — Every sense has its portion: the portion of the eye is a fair sight, and the portion of the spirit (rūḥ) is the loftiness of a companion's thought — and the portion of the spirit is the higher and the dearer.

2 — Do not commend a good deed with your tongue and disparage it by your doings.

3 — Fineness of appearance and of dress is for the women who go forth at morning; the refining of character in men is with men.

4 — I feel a prick in the conscience and a rebuke in the soul (nafs) at boasting, even when it is true.

It is no honour that a man should praise himself — rather it is deeds that are blamed and praised

5 — In my view he to whom wealth is sweet for the hoarding and amassing of it is no more than one who gathers the bricks in his house and does not build with them.

6 — If you want the sciences for the people, a little will suffice you.

7 — Feel your own lowliness before whoever is lowly in your eyes, and thank your Lord for what He has conferred upon you.

8 — Do not let the biographies of men keep you from acquainting yourself with the sciences and mastering them; for they were made only that one might learn men's works and follow their course. So acquaint yourself and act, that you may be set down on the page of history. You never ceased to dwell upon history, studying it — until we saw you yourself remembered in history

9 — Do not busy yourself with books, commending their titles and taking pains over their arrangement and ordering while you are slack about what is in them and about mastering it, so becoming like the money-changers, who wear out their bodies for others.

10 — Let your conversation in the sciences be instruction if you stand above your companion, partnership if you are his equal, and learning if he is better than you.

11 — Do not busy yourself with memorizing poetry and the fancies of the poets and their verbal ornament, and so leave aside the speech of him who does not speak out of caprice.

12 — I have seen some people take pains over buying books and arranging them and spending the bulk of their hours upon this; had they spent some of those hours in coming to understand some part of them, they would have been masters in what they had looked into.

13 — Do not believe that you are the lowest of people in worth, so that you make light of the grave sin and of the small; but believe that you were created disposed to be an angel in human form, and that none excels you but a man whose character has been nurtured and whose conscience is pure, who is a key to good and a lock to evil.

14 — People suppose that the harm that befalls them is from others; had they investigated a little, they would have known that it is they who brought it upon themselves — as though each one of them had harmed his own soul without being aware of it.

15 — Do not bind yourself by what the Law and religion have not bound you with; this is one of the kinds of foolishness and dullness — and worse than this is he who casts the Law's binding behind his back.

16 — Do not be the first to show contempt for your companion, lest you be a wrongdoer.

17 — That you should leave your wealth to your bitterest enemy after your death is better than that you should stand in need of your dearest friend in your lifetime.

18 — People are able to live in clarity and concord, but they have preferred toil through their own doings and squandered the sweetness of life through their own ignorance.

19 — I marvel at one who spends his night and his day gathering the sciences and coming to understand them, and after that spends his hours in amusement.

20 — Let it not gladden you to work your tongue in lampooning another; for while you are busy with disparagement, one like you is busy with you — indeed more fiercely and more greatly.

21 — You are tiresome so long as you believe lightness to be in yourself.

23 — Do not visit one who finds you a burden, do not speak to one who does not turn toward you, and do not inform one who calls you a liar.

24 — It is not just that you should disparage another for a deed while you yourself do many times over what he does.

25 — Do not disparage another for a trait in which the two of you share.

26 — Do not busy yourself with lampooning one from whom you have seen neither benefit nor harm.

27 — Do not mention a thing by way of admiration for it; the hearer may not share your view, and will mock your thinking.

28 — The proud man is proud only out of his sense of a weakness in himself, that he may make it a filling for the void.

29 — Do not make knowledge an instrument for attaining your ends; make it rather that which is sought for its own sake.

30 — Wealth, knowledge, lineage, standing, cleverness — none of it profits if it is empty of essential character.

31 — Take care that your speech about the matters that concern you be one and the same, lest you be exposed afterwards, once they have inquired about you.

32 — If you want favour with the people by bettering your state in your person, your wealth and your house, then you have wearied yourself without being aware of it, for the people will not deal justly with you. Work rather for the love of beauty in things.

33 — Your preoccupation with people is a weakness of the weakness of confidence in the spirit, and evidence of the soul's poverty; for were it rich in itself, it would have occupied it.

34 — Strive to better your state, sooner or later, ( and do not regard ) the sum of it, lest it distract you from what you are engaged in.

35 — If there were nothing in rational philosophy (al-ḥikmah al-ʻaqliyyah) save that it gives your soul a value, if only in your own eyes, that would suffice. And the want of such esteem is evidence that it is but an echo with him, that he has not realized it; for the fruit of realizing it is the likeness to God in His might.

36 — Among the students there is one who strives to acquire knowledge, but his is speech by way of mere repetition, like a child taught to talk who says what he has heard while there exists in him no mental form matching what he heard; and the harm of such a one is greater than his benefit.

37 — Your likeness, when you worship for show, is the likeness of one who wore himself out getting water and took it up in his palm: the gaps between the fingers betrayed him, and no one profited by it.

38 — Do not make yourself famous for learning and then be slack, for by this you draw deficiency upon yourself when you are put to the test, while all you wanted was honour; and to be held in contempt after fame is harsher than to be known for ignorance from the outset. So keep your honour along with your ignorance if it is honour you want, and exert yourself along with learning if it is honour you want; otherwise, fame for learning together with neglect of it is of the stuff of folly and dullness.

40 — « It is of God's mercy toward His servants that He made each man's imagination (mukhaylah) veiled from the eyes of the other; for were it visible, people would fall to killing one another, and the order of things would break down. »

41 — For the most part the soul's agitations are one of the results of a deficiency of intellect (ʻaql). Do you not see that the waves of the sea flood over the land because they have found no room within its own compass?

42 — Loudness of voice is one of the results of a weakness in the soul; for if a man perceived strength in himself, he would set the strength of his argument in place of the loudness of his voice.

43 — A man's guile and his rancour toward another is one of the results of spiritual weakness and of his sense that he is contemptible; for were he strong, he would set plain speaking as his resistance to what is said of him.

Written with his pen, humbled before the majesty of God Sayyid ʻAlī al-Ṭūbjī on 16 Ramaḍān, the year 1335